Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

April 20, 2011

Even before the lamentable advent of Obamacare, the federal government covered more than half of the country?s health care costs. This intervention caused costs to soar by subsidizing demand. It also distorted the role of the individual physician.

Dr. Miguel Faria, a neurosurgeon who fled Communist Cuba as a child, points out that in America?s post-Hippocratic medical system, the physician is required to act on behalf of the collective. As Dr. M. Gregg Bloche pointed out in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, HMO administrators already practice ?health care rationing on the sly.?

Bloche has joined the small but growing number of academics and practitioners calling for overt health care rationing.
He insists that ?as a society, we ? have to set limits when it comes to individual treatment,? and ?let politicians and policymakers grapple truthfully with these issues rather than punishing them for `killing Grandma? when they speak of making hard choices about healthcare.?

A better alternative would be to dismantle the machinery of health care rationing, thereby restoring our right to make those decisions ourselves.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.